Philadelphia City Council Upgrades IT

As part of a $3.6 million city budget approved June 28, Philadelphia City Council members will get an IT upgrade. The new budget includes an extra $500,000 for the council, a portion of which will go toward “Internet-technology upgrades.”

At a recent committee hearing, Councilman Brian O’Neill complained that the council’s technology is badly out of date. “When people start bringing their own computers and their own wireless cards into work, you know something is wrong and you don’t have to go any further than that,” O’Neill said, according to Technically Philly, a local technology publication. “The first time the computer is warmed up can take ten minutes.”

Besides hardware and software upgrades, the council expects to use the funds to hire additional technical staff and support the Jobs Commission, which will examine unemployment in the city, reported the Philadelphia Daily News.

The 2012-2013 city budget includes $2.2 million in departmental reductions, the Daily News said, with much of the savings coming from contract changes at the Office of Information Technology. The city also saved money because it didn't have to purchase salt for snow removal last winter.

With many educational organizations shifting their entire schedules to distance learning tools or full virtual environments indefinitely, never has the statement “we are all in this together” been more poignant.